Share this story. Realmac Software's is a feature-rich Web design application with a unique balance between simplicity and power. It occupies the space between everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink apps like Dreamweaver and bargain-bin apps like iWeb. Used by both Web designers with a list of clients and home users with website ideas burning a hole in their keyboards, RapidWeaver is maturing even more with a forthcoming upgrade. RapidWeaver 4 will bring a solid batch of new features and integration, and Realmac Software was kind enough to let us take an early look at what's in store. Themes can now be previewed in larger sizes, searched, and even tagged by their designer For RapidWeaver users who manage more than one site, the significant improvements made to theme organization will be very welcome.
The previous viewer strip is now more akin to a resizable drawer that can display more than one row of themes, and new high-resolution theme previews can also be scaled larger. Themes are also searchable now, complete with keywords like 'horizontal' so users can search by navigation styles, color, or sidebar count. It appears that only theme designers are able to apply keywords; there is no tagging system we can find, at least in this early beta. Interestingly, theme previews designed for previous RapidWeaver versions look great, even when scaled up to 600 px and beyond. RapidWeaver 4 supports preview sizes up to 800 x 950 px. Speaking of themes, RapidWeaver 4 will ship with four new themes, including the one that Realmac Software used for its site over the last year or two.
Of course, you don't want to be that person who uses a theme like Realmac Software's previous site right out of the box, so be sure to look up something like (or simply edit them by hand) for all your personalization needs. One last major style enhancement is a rich text editing bar along the bottom of the window for any pages that support it. This will offer much easier access to common operations like creating lists, aligning text and images, and stripping formatting from pasted content. Quick Look and RapidWeaver - two great tastes that taste great together A number of welcome enhancements and new features in RapidWeaver 4 also tackle various aspects of workflow and Mac OS X integration. Publishing is now truly a one-click operation, and RapidWeaver 4 project files are Quick Look compatible (heads up: RapidWeaver 4 is Leopard-only) for much easier browsing from the Finder. Perhaps more significantly, RapidWeaver 4 utilizes an entirely new XML-based file format that has some big advantages. First, large sites will perform much better, and third-party developers will be able to interact with RapidWeaver 4 project files for any number of interesting possibilities.
For example, RapidWeaver 4 doesn't offer too many new blogging features such as bookmarklets or the ability to easily send content from other apps into a blog post. But plug-ins could be created for desktop blogging clients and —which do have some of the aforementioned features—that would allow blogging to a RapidWeaver 4 site files from those applications (remember, though, that RapidWeaver would still need to perform the actual publishing to the Web). The potential power for sending content to RapidWeaver 4 sites from other Mac OS X apps is pretty cool, and I, personally, am excited to see what the community can come up with. The not-so-little details. Adding a page to a RapidWeaver site is much more visual, but also searchable I'm a big fan of the little details developers put into decently sized applications like RapidWeaver, and version 4 has no shortage of this kind of polish.
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The redesigned Add Page dialog, for example, now allows you to select more than one page to add at once. This will be a big time-saver for folks creating new RapidWeaver sites with any regularity. Support for tracking site statistics with (a free service) has also been added. A redesigned Site Setup window allows users to paste their Analytics code for easy insertion across the site.
Also new in the Site Setup window is support for WebClips. Simply drop your WebClip image into the right area and your site will stand out when saved to iPhone and iPod touch home screens. Making it easier to stay on top of the RapidWeaver community, Realmac Software has added a News Center that appears at startup (naturally, this can be toggled off). This News Center displays current news, updates, the latest plug-in and theme releases, site showcases, and more useful information. One final little detail for those who take advantage of RapidWeaver's flourishing third-party plug-in community is that most, if not all, plug-ins should work fine with RapidWeaver 4 (which, in reality, probably wasn't so little for Realmac Software to pull off). I only use a handful myself (, and, to be exact), but they all seem to make good on Realmac Software's claims.
But wait, there's more Overall, RapidWeaver 4 is a welcome evolution of an already flexible and powerful Web design application. The new features and polish should offer something for users both old and new, advanced and newbie. Since we only got our hands on a pre-release beta for this article, however, we'll have to wait to pass judgement on the final version once it ships. But why wait until then to get your own hands on RapidWeaver 4 and judge for yourself? Starting today, Realmac Software is allowing you to. Of course, if you're using RapidWeaver in any kind of production environment and have do-or-die aspects of your workflow, be sure to back up your sites and proceed with caution. RapidWeaver 4 can effortlessly convert project files from previous versions, but saving them in RapidWeaver 4's new file format means there's no going back.
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While we don't have an ETA on when the new version will ship, RapidWeaver 4 will be a free upgrade for owners of version 3.6, the last major release.